SIGHTING: ESCANABA, MICHIGAN (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"My son is now 23-years-old and lives in a group-home in Gwinn, Michigan. He was born with a rare genetic condition called 48XX/YY syndrome, a rare condition that causes physical problems as well as many emotional and behavioral problems. He has a cognitive I.Q. of 79, which is high for his condition. Basically, he is very verbal and insightful and can distinguish reality from fantasy. My son, who I'll call James, was about 12 years old when he had a close encounter. We live in a rural area of Upper Michigan about 9 miles from Escanaba on 40 acres of land. One night my wife and I decided to go to bed at around 10:00 and asked James if he wanted to go to bed. He asked if he could stay up to watch a T.V. program that he wanted to watch. My wife and I agreed and went to bed and fell fast asleep. Upon waking the next day we were shocked at a story that James told to us about what happened the night before. James said that he went to the kitchen to make a peanut butter sandwich when he noticed, through our large twin picture windows at the southern side of our kitchen,an unusual light hovering above the tree line, which is about 150 yards to the back of the kitchen, seperated by a field. I quickly pointed out that it was just an airplane, being that airplanes normaly took a direct route over the edge of our land enroute to the Delta County airport. To our surprise, he became agitated by my presumption and insisted that it was NOT an airplane! I told him to calm down and explain what he saw. He said that the light was not moving like an airplane and was perfectly still in the air about 50 to 100 feet above the tree line. He said that it then floated towards the house over the field about 50 feet off the ground (as high as the pine tree at the right of our back yard, for height referance) and stopped between the apple tree and the garage,that is 40 feet from our house, and hovered motionless without a sound, but he felt a vibrating hum in the house. When I grilled him about such a fantastic story, he said that the craft was about 15 feet across and 25 feet high and shaped like an Ice cream cone and glowing a purplish color with lights that surrounded the middle of the object. He said that the object floated in slow-motion to the left (east) until it stopped above our pumphouse where we get our fresh water.It hovered there for a minute or so and then slowly moved out over the field and suddenly shot up into the air "faster than a jet" and disappeared up into the sky. My wife and I didn't know what to make of the story, being that James had never created such a fantastic story before and he was adament that he was telling the truth. Since that time I have grilled him periodically on this episode and have even suggested that he was watching a U.F.O. program that inspired the story, but every time I do so he gets upset and repeats the exact same story in detail that he told to us that morning! I believe him and I wonder how many sightings there have been that have been shrugged-off simply because the observer was developementally or phychologically impaired, even though a similar story may have been accepted by a "normal" observer? Thank you, Dan. "